


don't leave me tongue-tied

by owlvsdove



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-19 03:55:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2373554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlvsdove/pseuds/owlvsdove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma sends Fitz a package while she's away.</p>
<p>[Spoilers for 2x01.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't leave me tongue-tied

**Author's Note:**

> I know this makes no medical sense but also I don't care.

 

The parcel arrives fairly quickly, although he doesn’t find it for about a week. It’s his own fault, really; he hasn’t been spending much time in his own bunk. Sometimes he sleeps in Skye’s bed, sometimes in Trip’s. Sometimes in hers.

It is a comically thick yellow envelope; and rather than printing out a label in SHIELD-era formality, she’s written his name in her own precise script. Skye had long ago hacked into mail databases worldwide, had all of their mail forward to a dead drop where they could pick it up securely. So far he’d gotten a few alumni letters from his various universities and a very squished package from his mum from his last birthday, so stamped over with forwarding labels he couldn’t tell who it was from until he opened it.

Jemma’s parcel was clean, though. She must’ve copied the address before she left.

His heart clenches.

The light is on in May’s bunk, so before he can chicken out he crosses the hall and knocks on the door, package in hand. When it opens, he can tell that she is a bit surprised, if only because he’s known her long enough to parse it out of the look on her face.

She raises an eyebrow in greeting.

He holds up the package.

“It’s real. It’s from Simmons.”

“Okay.”

“I was wondering when you would find it,” she says, a hint of mirth in her steady voice.

“What is it?”

Her subtle amusement grows. “I don’t know, Fitz. Perhaps you should open it?”

“Right. Yeah. Thank you, May.”

“You’re welcome, Fitz.”

He hardly wants to tear it open like he usually would, because he can tell it’s stuffed to the brim and also he’s a little afraid. So he takes his shaking hands and lifts the flap delicately, feels it tear bit by bit. Until it’s open. He pulls out the stack and breathes out.

Geometrically: one square box, like a plastic pill box but with more rows; next to it, an equal-width box closed by a combination lock; and squared on top of the two of them, a letter.

He knows he’s not supposed to open the boxes first, and he dutifully follows her silent instructions. He goes for the letter, with his name written in her handwriting. _Fitz_.

The letter is in more of the scribbles he’s used to – her handwriting in the lab is a terrifying mélange of shorthand and chicken scratch. He regards the mess fondly.

 

_Fitz,_

_The pills, in this order:_

_1-4: The combination lock_

_5-16: My coordinates_

_17-28: The number where you can reach me._

_Love, Jemma_

 

She seems to have scribbled something out there before her signature, which is interesting; usually she’s too anal not to get another sheet and start over, but she must’ve been in a rush.

And then there’s the post-script, which feels more like her than anything he’s seen in weeks:

 

_P.S. Yes, one of them is just a multivitamin. Just take it anyway. You know I worry._

_P.P.S. No, you can’t take them all at once. You will definitely die. And then I’ll find a way to bring you back to life, not unlike Victor Frankenstein, so I can kill you myself._

 

It’s early morning still, but he figures now is a good time as any to take the first one, so he gathers up the parcel and takes it to the lab, clearing a spot at the edge of one of the tables for it to sit indefinitely. He opens the pill box and it’s just like she said: two pills in each cubby, one a large multivitamin and one a dissolvable that, terrifyingly, she probably produced herself. They had experimented briefly with dissolvables once before, but it was in a _very_ different context.  He trusts her, of course, unwaveringly. But god. Yeah, that’s terrifying.

He’s not entirely sure how it’s supposed to work: he takes a pill and gets a number. Somehow. He supposes it’s a good thing the combination lock is first; she must’ve designed this game to be Fitz-proof, knowing that he can just clip the bloody thing off if he missed the first few digits.

He swallows the multivitamin with an internal _yes Mum_. Then he places her concoction on his tongue. And waits. It tastes like peppermint.

How does she come up with this shit?

Once the grittiness of the pill is gone, he waits. Riding only on intuition, he pulls a mirror over and opens his mouth, looking for clues.

Trip happens to be passing by the lab doors, and Fitz all but shrieks his name.

“What? What’s wrong?” he says, on alert.

“What does it say on my tongue?”

“What?”

Shite. He must sound fucking nuts. Probably by design. Thanks a lot, Jemma.

“Look at my tongue!”

Trip leans in close, indulging him as he sticks his tongue out. But he leans back surprised. “Seven.”

“Seven?”

“Yeah, seven.” He pauses. “What the hell is going on?”

Fitz haphazardly explains and Trip lets out a low whistle.

“So Simmons left you a series of clues in the same way that Fruit Roll-Ups did to children in the early 2000s.”

“Well. Yes.”

He shrugs. “Cool.”

The first four days are easy to get through, thanks to a clear and immediate goal. The locked box. On the fourth day he opens it eagerly, shooing out Trip and Skye, who had become his daily tongue checkers.

There is a note inside the lid.

 

_Do you remember that time_ —

 

He doesn’t have to keep reading. Considering the contents of the box, he already knows which story she’s referring to. He reads anyway.

 

_Do you remember that time we were at your mum’s for Christmas, and we went to Tesco and bought out all of their Freddos? And then we tried to eat them all in one night and were sugar-drunk by morning. Poor Mary had to put up with us, tired and giddy, and you just told her that’s how we usually operate._

_Sorry I missed Christmas._

 

The box is full of Freddos.

He eats two.

The next goal is a little harder to get through. Almost two weeks. And he can already guess that she’s somewhere in Britain, considering the package. But he feels like this might be a test of patience, so he musters up as much of a good attitude as he can manage and focuses on getting through each day.

It’s nice now, too, because Trip and Skye have gotten Mack in on the game, and so the three of them will lean in towards him with their thinking faces on and wildly debate which number is there just to entertain him. And then sometimes, once the jury has decided, they’ll stick around and fill him in on the missions they’ve been working on and he’ll listen as he works.

He could really just look in a mirror. But it’s better this way.

The Jemma he created, the one of his hallucinations, doesn’t speak to him anymore. Sometimes she watches him work but she doesn’t talk. A few weeks ago, Skye had come into the lab with her laptop, and it was one of those mornings where it was very clear that Skye had had a rough and restless night. She gave him a tired smile and asked if he remembered _this_ , played him a video of the three of them from a time when Skye had decided they should do a science show like Bill Nye. There were the three of them, laughing in the lab on the Bus and not really communicating much science to an audience that didn’t really exist anyway, and at some moments you could even hear Ward trying not to laugh off-camera.

After he watched that, his vision of Jemma stopped talking.

So it really was better with Skye and Trip and Mack checking in on him.

Two weeks of patience lead him to coordinates, and he’s cheered by what he finds.

She’s at the Hub.

They had secured it immediately after the fall of SHIELD, leaving a barebones crew to keep it at least semi-functional. He didn’t have any clue what she might be doing there, besides designing semi-suspect drugs for him to take. But by the end of another two weeks, he could call her and find out.

The next morning, when he told the three of them where Jemma was, even Skye looked surprised.

“You didn’t know?”

“You think we would keep that from you?” She counters.

He shrugs. “If she asked.”

“May might, if she asked. Coulson definitely would. But I don’t know. I think if you asked me where she was, Leopold, well, how could I keep it from you?”

He’s not sure what any of that is supposed to mean, but she’s giving him the kind of look he remembers from before, so he says thanks as she kisses him on the cheek.

The remaining pills lessen surprisingly quickly, mostly because things have started getting busier at the Playground. Everyone’s coming in more and more with samples and questions. No, it isn’t long at all until it’s the very last pill in the set, and the very last time he sticks his tongue out at his friends. (In this context.)

“Is that a one or a seven?”

“One.”

“I think it’s seven.”

“This is pretty bloody important so do you think you could come to a consensus, _please_?”

“Perhaps if you stop fucking talking, Leopold.”

He sticks his tongue back out.

“See that little thingy, though? I think it’s a seven.”

“Alright fine. It’s a seven.”

“Seven,” Fitz says.

“Go call her!” Trip urges.

“Seven,” he repeats.

“Are you malfunctioning, little robot?” Skye asks.

“He’s just nervous,” Mack says. “You’ll do okay, Fitz.”

Skye steps closer. “She wants to talk to you, Fitz. She did all this because she wants to talk to you.”

He nods.

“Do you want to talk to her?”

He nods again. He’s dumb with the desire to talk to her, overwhelmed by it.

“So go,” she says.

“We’ll be in the mess,” Trip says, and the three of them retreat.

He picks up his phone and the pad he’s been using to keep track of the numbers, and he goes back to his bunk. He gets under the covers completely. He needs a cocoon for this.

It rings three times, and his stomach drops.

And then: “Fitz?”

“How’d you know it was me?”

“You’re the only one that has this number.”

“Oh.”

“Hi.”

“Hi,” he says back.

“Are you alright?”

Of course that’s the first thing she asks. Isn’t that what all of this is about?

“Better.” And it’s the truth, he realizes all at once. His friends are back with him and he’s getting more done and he has more responsibility and he’s hearing her voice right now.

And the haunting has sort of gone away. Better than nothing.

“Good.”

“What’s in the drugs, anyway?”

“Oh. Um.”

“Jemma?”

“It’s actually just the same medication you were taking before.” She seems to regret that.

“Just peppermint. And dissolvable?”

“For the purposes of this…thing. Yes.”

“Oh. Okay.”

There is a long pause as he thinks that over.

“What exactly _were_ the purposes of this thing?”

She’s quiet for a moment. “I guess just to put a timer on us. It’s not like us to go this long without speaking.”

“I didn’t know how to reach you,” he points out.

“I didn’t know if you wanted to reach me.”

He’s not sure either. The time before she left was...a time of extremes.

Except he is sure. Fitz, at baseline, always wants Jemma. But this has not been a good time for either of them.

“What are you doing at the Hub?” he says instead, because he wants to ask the real question.

“Recruitment,” she says after clearing her throat. “I found some holdouts at the Academy who needed some help, so I’ve been giving them as much practical training as I can.”

“You’d be good at that.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, a little adoring mob to boss around.”

“Ugh, shut up.”

“So. How long, then?” He asks.

“That’s up to Coulson, I think.”

“At your recommendation.”

“Yeah, I suppose.”

She’s quiet for a moment, so he speaks. “You could bring the little mob home?”

Something changes in the connection, in the air, something, and he’s not sure how it happens, but he is sure that she’s started to cry.

“I miss you,” she says thickly.

“I miss you too.” It’s true; it aches. “Things are okay here, Jemma, but I miss you, too.”

“We’ll figure something out, Fitz.” A vow. “We’ll put all of this back together.”

And he’ll hold onto that until she returns.

 


End file.
